“Aye, Admiral,” Fran said. “Do you want me to remain here?”
“Yes,” Kat said. “They might come calling.”
“I doubt it,” Janice said. “What would be the point?”
“An attack here would make us look weak,” Whitehall pointed out. “And everything we’d done on the surface would be lost.”
Kat couldn’t disagree. The enemy could not be allowed to recapture their former homeworld or even hold the high orbitals for an hour or so. An hour would be more than long enough to smash the Commonwealth garrisons and give the insurgents a chance to reclaim the surface and kill the collaborators. By the time her fleet returned, Ahura Mazda would be in ruins. Again.
And we wouldn’t even be able to evacuate the people who worked with us, she thought. The people who placed their lives in our hands.
“We will keep a superdreadnought squadron here, under cloak,” she said. “They might take the bait.”
She rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache starting to blossom beneath her skin. She wanted—she needed—to take action . . . but all she could do was wait. The enemy would determine their next target and then . . .
If we’re lucky, we’ll have a task force close enough to intercept, she told herself. And even if we are not, we might be able to trace them back to their base.
“We’ll meet again this evening,” she said. “And then we’ll start dispersing the fleet. Dismissed.”
She watched them go, then sat back in her chair. She’d taken a gamble—a big one. There were too many things that could go wrong, too many places the enemy might attack . . . The Theocrats, like it or not, would dictate the pace of the conflict. She might get lucky—she certainly hoped she’d get lucky—but the odds weren’t on her side. The Commonwealth could do everything right and still lose.
Which happens, sometimes, she thought, recalling a piece of advice from one of her instructors. The Royal Navy had been preparing for war and the cadets, regardless of their family background, had deliberately been put into a no-win scenario. You do everything in your power, you do everything you can . . . and you lose anyway.
She tapped her terminal, writing out a brief message for the family manager back home. He’d check the records, locate William, and reply. She’d have to contact her older brother, sooner rather than later, but she couldn’t face him right now. Peter hadn’t been happy when she’d accepted a seat on the Privy Council, even though it gave her a voice at the king’s table. He’d pointed out that it conflicted with her duties to the family.
Not that he cared before, she thought. I was just his annoying kid sister.
She shook her head as she stood, brushing the crumbs off her uniform. She wasn’t a little girl any longer, or a teenager who was slowly starting to realize that there was no place for her within the family; she was a grown woman, with a career and a life of her own. And Peter wasn’t the stuffy big brother either.
I suppose we never really grow out of our childhood until our parents are gone, she told herself ruefully. The people who’d killed her father had never been caught. That worried her, more than she cared to admit. And now . . . we have to be adults.
Kitty stepped into the room. “Admiral?”
“I’ll be in my quarters,” Kat said. “Were there any urgent developments on the planet while I was gone?”
“No, Admiral,” Kitty said. “A handful of minor problems, but nothing that demands your attention.”
“Good,” Kat said.
She walked back to her quarters, feeling tired. If she took a nap . . .
A message was blinking on her display when she walked into the room. She frowned, then sat down in front of the terminal and placed her hand against the sensor. The message decrypted itself a moment later.
“Lady Falcone,” the family manager said. “Commodore Sir William McElney returned to Tyre two months ago, where he was hired as a naval officer by Asher Dales. I’m afraid that we have been unable to obtain direct contact details . . .”
Kat froze the message and checked the starchart. Asher Dales? She’d heard that name before . . . Margaret Falcone had mentioned it as a suitable long-term investment, if she recalled correctly. Kat knew very little about Asher Dales, but she trusted her sister’s judgment. If Margaret said it was a good investment, it was a good investment.
“Ah,” she said. She keyed her wristcom. “Fran? I want my task force to escort the StarCom ship to Asher Dales.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Fran said. “May I ask why?”
Kat hesitated. “I have an idea,” she said. It wasn’t a social call. Not a completely social call, at any rate. “But I’ll discuss it with you later.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TYRE
At least we don’t have to wear the absurd robes this time, Peter Falcone thought as he found his place on the ducal bench. The other dukes nodded to him. There would be no open discussions in the Houses of Parliament. We’d be hot and sweaty by the time the session was over.
He leaned back in his seat and surveyed the giant hall. The aristocracy occupied the upper seats, while their commoner counterparts and the colonial representatives were at the bottom. A neat bit of symbolism, he felt, that was lost on absolutely no one. The king and his supporters might want to make the colonial representatives feel welcome, but hardly anyone else shared their view. The Commonwealth was a money sink, as far as they were concerned. Any hopes they’d had for upgrading the member worlds to full equality had been destroyed in the fires of war.
Shaking his head, he keyed his datapad and scanned the latest set of updates from his staffers while waiting for the session to begin. There had been a small surge in the planetary stock market, although it didn’t seem focused enough
